Archive

Linux lacks any clear-cut system for determining which is the most popular or the best distribution, or which desktop environment is used more than others. That may be one of the major frustrations among Linux developers trying to spread the word about adopting the Linux desktop instead of Microsoft...

Unless you are an atypical Linux user, you tend to accept the default apps featured in your distro of choice. After all, if what you use works just fine, why scavenge around for a replacement? If saying yes to that question means you miss out on adding the Listen audio player to your desktop tools, ...

The recent release of Ubuntu 12.10, aka Quantal Quetzal, is a more palatable version of the open source OS built around the Unity desktop environment. Perhaps I am growing more accustomed to Unity, or maybe Canonical's developers are succeeding in refining the graphical user interface, so it seems l...

The general public knows little about the true technology fundamentals of cloud computing, suggests a recent survey commissioned by IT vendor Citrix. Almost a third of the roughly 1,000 U.S. adults polled thought cloud computing was related to weather. However, the ascendance of Linux and open sourc...

Mention big data and the first thing that might come to mind is Hadoop. The open source software framework has recently enjoyed a great deal of popularity among vendors and enterprise users. However, if it is to really be useful to the enterprise, Hadoop may need to be taken out of open source, argu...

Netflix on Monday released the source code for its Chaos Monkey tool into the open source jungle. Chaos Monkey is a tool the company built in the Amazon Web Services system. Its job is to randomly kill virtual machines and services within Netflix's architecture. The idea is to test systems in real-w...

The month of June has not been kind to Microsoft hardware partners. Last week, Redmond revealed that it's getting into the Windows tablet game with the introduction of the Surface, meaning it will compete for sales with its own allies. It followed that up with news about Windows Phone 8. The upcomin...

China's antitrust authorities have approved Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility, on the condition that the Android operating system remain open source and its code be made freely available to original equipment manufacturers. Android devices had nearly 74 percent of the Chinese market in Q4, 2011...

The Internet is a hub for acquiring music, video and a just about any other form of content. Miro is one of the most capable player apps that I have seen for all of this media. Keeping up with the various forms of content the Web has to offer can be a daunting task. The process is similar to what...

Microsoft on Monday said it will pay $300 million to get a piece of Barnes & Noble's Nook tablet action for the Windows 8 platform. The two companies will partner in a new Barnes & Noble subsidiary which will push further into the education market. Barnes & Noble will initially create a ...

Amazon Web Services has teamed up with private cloud infrastructure provider Eucalyptus in a move that could enable the deployment of hybrid clouds. Hybrid clouds are a combination of internal private clouds and external public clouds. Under the agreement, AWS will support the integration of privat...

Developers are losing interest in creating apps for Android because of the continued fragmentation of the operating system, according to a survey conducted jointly by Appcelerator and IDC between January and February. Its results show that interest in Android phone app development fell by nearly fiv...

Windows 8 is on its way. In fact, it's already here, in a manner of speaking. Microsoft recently released what it called a "consumer preview" version of the OS. When the final versions arrive, it will finally give Microsoft a leg up in the tablet market. That might take a bite out of the market sha...

The Clementine Music Player is an up and coming application that could replace your default music app. It is a close cousin to Amarok with just enough of its own personality to make it stand apart from the crowd. On any computing platform today, users have ample choices of music players. Most of the...

We've seen the rise of open source software in the enterprise and also beyond the IT industry, but the real keys to openness and its advantages in today's technology world -- where efficient use of cloud computing and supporting services are paramount -- exist in open application programming interfa...